Monday, January 10, 2011

Glenn Dennis Revisited

A bit of a preface about all this. Several years ago I decided that I would like to be invited to speak at more UFO conventions. I knew the problem was that I held some views that were not universally accepted in the UFO community. I thought that if I had only a skeptical argument I would not say anything about a case. I would promote only those that I believed had some legitimacy.

But I just couldn’t embrace some of the more ridiculous notions in the world of UFOs. The real breaking point came when I listened to Robert Willingham on Jeff Rense’s radio program. Based on what I learned, I knew that Willingham had not been an Air Force colonel. He was not a decorated veteran of World War II or Korea and had not been a fighter pilot. His claims of this military service outraged me. I could not, in good conscience, remain silent when I knew that there was absolutely no evidence that Willingham had served in the Air Force and that his story of a UFO crash was not true.

I had, in the past, suggested that I did not accept the tale told by Glenn Dennis. There were just too many problems in it, the most obvious was the lack of supporting testimony from those who were there, in Roswell, in 1947.

As I said in the last post, the question arose about how I learned Glenn Dennis’ name and that I answered. Walter Haut told me. From there we, and by we I mean Don Schmitt and I began our investigation into the Dennis story. Later others would contribute to our knowledge including Victor Golubic who at the time lived in Arizona and Ted Oliphant who, at the time, was a police officer in Alabama.

When I first met Dennis, in November, 1990, he told the story that he pretty much sticks to today. There have been modifications to it but those have come about because the information we, and when I say we I mean a number of different researchers, had provided.

According to Dennis, he was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell when he received a number of telephone calls from the base mortuary officer. He was asking questions about caskets, if they could be hermetically sealed and if he had any small ones in stock. He answered the questions but said that he didn’t have enough of the small caskets.

Later, because the mortuary also ran the ambulance service, not that uncommon in small towns in the 1940s, Dennis ran a slightly injured soldier out to the base. While at the base hospital, he saw a number of military ambulances parked there with their back doors opened. Inside he saw metallic wreckage, again not uncommon if there had been some kind of aircraft accident.

He said inside that ambulance he saw a canoe-shaped object. Not the whole canoe, but just the bow of it. He said that there were some symbols on it but he never really described these for me.Inside the hospital he saw they were unusually busy, which might have been accounted for by an aircraft accident. He thought he would look up a nurse he knew to learn what happened and maybe buy a Coke before he returned to the mortuary.

The nurse saw him first, in one of the hallways and told him to get out of there before he got himself into some kind of trouble. Before he could react, an officer that he described as having red hair and a nasty attitude caught him and asked him what he was doing in the hospital. The officer was accompanied by a black NCO, whose attitude was equally bad.

According to what Dennis said to me, and said to others, he was told there had been no aircraft accident, there had been nothing going on, and that he should get back to the city as quickly as he could. He would tell no one what he had seen, or thought he had seen, and if he ever mentioned anything about it, they would be picking his bones out of the sand.

He also mentioned that some of the threats came from the black NCO. This has always bothered me given the timing of these events. Yes, there were black NCOs in the Army and there were twenty-five or twenty-six assigned to the base at the time. However, it seems that neither the red-haired officer nor the black NCO were assigned there. They had come into Roswell from some other location.

But this was 1947 and I wondered about a black NCO threatening a white civilian. True, the officer had made the initial threats but given the era, given the racial divide in 1947, would a black NCO felt secure enough to threaten a civilian?

At any rate, Dennis left the base puzzled by all the activity and the security that was being maintained. It confused him, but a day or so later, he said that he had spoken to the nurse he knew. He had met her at the officers club and she had more to say. According to him, she told him that she had been involved in a preliminary autopsy of little creatures. She was sure that they were not from Earth and she told him not to tell anyone what about the events.

I will point out here because it does impact on the validity of his tale, that in the initial interviews, Dennis suggested that there was a romantic interest. He and the nurse had a relation that might have developed into something more permanent. This would explain why she felt she could tell Dennis about an activity that was classified even though she would have been ordered not to talk to anyone who was not cleared to know it.

Within days she was transferred from the base, apparently sent to England. Dennis said that he received one note from her, giving him her address in England. The letter he wrote came back marked, "deceased". She had been killed in an aircraft accident, according to what he was told by other nurses at the base.

This also suggests a relation that was more than casual. That she would write to him while enroute to England suggests a rather strong relation. If such a relation didn’t exist, then there would be no reason for her to communicate with Dennis so quickly.

All this kind of information gave us a witness to the bodies and testimony that those bodies were not human. It gave us information about transfers from the base, and it was a story that ended in tragedy. It would make great television, and we were in Roswell to make a documentary about the crash when I first talked to Dennis.

But this story also provided me with a lot of information I could check. There were components of it that would have been reported in other arenas and all I had to do was find the right information sources.

Yes, Dennis was reluctant to give us the name of the nurse. He said that he had promised her that he would never reveal what she said or who she was. But then she had been dead for decades and was beyond Army regulations and Army punishment for revealing classified information. There was no reason to keep this secret.

He did supply me with a name, with the promise that I would not tell anyone who it was. Naomi Self was the name of the nurse, and I have no trouble revealing it now because Dennis apparently shared that name with many others who released it. Even Philip Klass, in one of his SUN newsletters, gave the name as Naomi Maria Selff, a variation that Dennis had apparently given to Karl Pflock at some point.

Of course I checked the Yearbook that Walter Haut had produced in 1947 that gave us so many names. She wasn’t in it. But then many who had been at the base in 1947 were not listed.

She was not in the base telephone directory which held the names and base telephone numbers for many of the officers. Of course, as a nurse, her name might not appear in that book either.

I had noticed that the Roswell Daily Record, on the front page, nearly everyday, welcomed newly assigned soldiers and officers to Roswell. Her name didn’t surface there either... though I wondered if they would have printed the name of a young, single woman, again given the time frame.

I checked the New York Times Index, which, in the pre-computer age, was a great tool. I could look up aircraft accidents and found them broken down by date, type of aircraft, location, and when and where it had appeared in the newspaper. I searched everything from July 1947 through 1955 and found no aircraft accidents in England, Europe or the United States that had claimed the lives of five Army nurses as Dennis had said.

Don Berliner, who was conducting his own research along similar lines, searched the Stars and Stripes. This is a newspaper printed for the military overseas. Had such a tragedy occurred, then that information would have been published in it. He found nothing.

Not that this proved anything. The Army, in an attempt to stop people from searching for her, put out the rumor that she had been killed. It explained why she had never written to him again. The details he had could be wrong and that was why we could find nothing about it.

There was one source of information that we hadn’t tried and that was the Morning Reports. In the Army, at that time, each unit produced a report of the number of people available for duty that day. Those reporting into a unit were listed by name and serial number. Those sick in the hospital were listed by name and serial number. Those on leave, those on temporary duty and those transferred were listed by name and serial number. And all those morning reports were housed in the big National Archives center in St. Louis. All you had to do was write to them and ask for what you wanted.

Which, of course, I did. And in return I got the Morning Reports, not for the medical staff, but instead for the Headquarters Company. I went back to them a couple of times and was told that the Morning Reports for that particular unit were no where to be found.

You might think that the missing Morning Reports suggest a conspiracy to hide the information and keep us from verifying that the nurse had been stationed in Roswell. A researcher, Vic Golubic, wanted to pursue this. He called the Records Center and talked to several people there. Eventually they located the Morning Reports for the unit.

The critical dates, July and August, were available. Since Self or Selff had apparently been transferred not long after the UFO crash, her name should have been in the Morning Reports in July or August, but it was not. But Golubic had requested the Morning Reports for the whole year of 1947 and much of 1946, so that he had the names of many of the nurses, but no Naomi Maria Selff or Naomi Self or anything that sort of matched.

Golubic would work the problem many different ways according to what he told me, chasing doctors who might have known nurses, civilian agencies in Roswell that would have employed nurses, and even going to the Army which had records of nurses and nursing students that went back into the early 1940s including those from the Cadet Nurse Corps Identification Cards that listed some 124,064 names. He was unable to find any variation of Self’s name in any of these locations.

I worked with a police officer, Ted Oliphant, and we searched throughout the United States attempting to find her. Eventually we would find four women named Naomi Self (yes, it is some what rare name, and we found four), but none was the right one.

I also used one of the CD-ROM telephone directories containing millions of names but couldn’t find her. I tried variations, including those provided by Dennis and still had no luck. And yes, I realize that she might have gotten married and that her married name would probably be different than her maiden name. Still, we could find no trace of her.

Golubic confronted Dennis about this, saying that he could find no record that a nurse with that name even existed. According to what he told me, Dennis said that he had not given any of us the correct name because he had promised to protect her identity. He hinted to Golubic that her last name did begin with an "S" and there was some speculation that it might have been Sipes.

Golubic, like many of us, thought this was just a dodge because we had proved a negative. No record of her in any of the places that it should have been had been found, and when that information was presented, Dennis changed it. That meant we would have to begin all over again.

But I didn’t believe that Dennis had not given us the real name in the beginning. I don’t know why he picked the name he did, but I don’t think he was doing it to protect the nurse. I think he believed we wouldn’t have the resources to track this, and I don’t think he realized the level of documentation existed in the 1940s that did.

I had talked to him once and he said that he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t find his nurse because he had given us the name. He stressed that he had reluctantly shared the real name with us in the hopes of our finding her, or what had really happened to her. Why couldn’t we learn anything?

I pointed out that people have the same name and I had talked, that morning, with a Robert Slusher who had been in the Army during World War II. I was looking for a Robert Slusher who had been with the 509th in Roswell in 1947. The guy I talked to was not the right man.

Dennis then said to me, "Oh, I know Bob Slusher. He lives over in Alamogordo."

When I talked to that Slusher, I learned it was the right man. But the point here is that Dennis was pushing the name, telling us that he had given us the right name and we couldn’t find his nurse. When we said there was no nurse by that name, Dennis changed his story and his nurse’s name.

Given all that, I wasn’t a fan of Dennis. I also learned that he hadn’t been a mortician in 1947 but an embalmer. A slight embellishment and maybe not one of overriding importance. Skeptics would, of course, use this to hammer him if they had known it.

There were other minor alterations in his story but these seemed to be more of the problems with memory than an attempt to deceive. For example, he took us to what had once been the base hospital and laid out the scene for us. He pointed to where the ambulances had been parked, what door he had entered, and what loading area had been used by the military for the bodies (as seen in this picture). The problem here was that the hospital as it stood then, in 1990s was not the hospital in 1947. In 1947, the hospital was comprised of a number of separate buildings, each with it’s own function (as seen below). When I was there in 1990s, a single building had replaced all those others.

It would seem to me that Dennis, if he was telling us the truth, would have known that. It would seem that he would have said that this doesn’t look quite right but there had been no hesitation by him when he was describing the scene to me. This suggests an invented tale rather than a lapse of memory.

Is this another big blunder, or is it just a faulty memory that was fifty years in the making? Given the name trouble, maybe it was just more of the invented tale.

In fact, at one point he was telling people that we all had pressed him for a name, meaning that we UFO investigators had wanted the name. He said that he told us he’d give us a name but that it wouldn’t be the right name. We just hadn’t listened to him when he cautioned us. This was, of course, an attempt to blame UFO researchers for the Naomi Self name. That should have annoyed all of us, but apparently I was about the only one who thought this to be outrageous.

I can take this a step further, which I believe to be important. Dennis had told Karl Pflock that his, Dennis’ nurse, had told him that the autopsies had been performed by two doctors who came in from Walter Reed. That caused researchers to ask why they would have called Dennis about embalming the bodies as he had claimed. Dennis again said that he had been misquoted. The trouble was that he was on video tape saying that his nurse told him that the pathologists would have to do something when they got back to Walter Reed. He hadn’t been misquoted.

There is one other point that should be made and that is that in 1947, according to the City Directory, Dennis was married. His wife’s name was Dorothy. So, why would the nurse have been involved in a romantic situation with Dennis, especially when he described her as a good Catholic girl?

The big problem was the shifting nature of the nurse story and her name. And then his attempts to blame us, meaning the researchers for those changes. But that isn’t the way it was at all. Had he told me that he would give me a name, but it wouldn’t be right, I would have told him to save it. No, what he told me was that he had promised her he wouldn’t tell anything and that I had to promise not to reveal her name. I held onto that promise until it seemed that everyone, Roswell researcher, UFO researcher, UFO skeptic and debunker, and tourist had been given the name.

There was another the thing that bothered me the most about Dennis’s story. He had been unable to provide documentation that he had once promised. And, that the story might not really be his, but was that of another employee at Ballard’s who had received the telephone calls and the inquiries. But that man had died before Dennis entered the arena, which meant the core of the story was true, but Dennis had not been the man in the middle of it.

What I had been told, by some, was that the mortician who received the telephone calls was not Dennis, but another man. That man would later tell Dennis about this and Dennis adopted it as his own story.

While my disappointment hinged on the failed attempts to find his nurse and the changing of her name, there were others who were still looking for Naomi Marie Selff, as the name had evolved. A group calling itself News of the Force (NOTF) said they had contacted three officers at the Pentagon who searched the records available there for Selff but found nothing. One officer said that he found nothing about her in the archives of the Women’s Memorial at Arlington.

But as I say repeatedly, nothing is ever simple in UFO research. NOFT claimed to have found a web site of military records and in their search turned up two women named Naomi Marie Self. One of the entries suggested one of the women was about 87 and the other suggested was 101. However, not long after NOTF found the records they disappeared from the Internet... which means that I can’t verify the information.

NOTF had also initiated some Freedom of Information requests to the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. According to them, the reply said, "The Air Force Worldwide Locator searched all available Air Force and Civil Service file computerized indexes (sic) and based on the information you provided did not find any record of ‘Naomi M. Self’ ever having served with the U.S. Air force under that name. AFPC searched all records contained in the Defense Eligibility Enrollment Reporting System (known as DEERS to all of us who have served and retired) database and the National Archives Records Administration (NARA) database, the Automated Records Management System (ARMS) database and the Military Personnel data Systems (MILPDS)... There were no identifiable responses for that name."

I’m afraid they wasted their effort, other than proving, once again that Naomi Self was not the right name and I wonder if these databases were user friendly. Would they have kicked out a name if it had a single F on the end? And, what if Naomi Sipes was the right name? It probably wouldn’t have kicked that out.

Sure, I’ve read some of the supporting statements for Dennis. Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, in their book, Witness to Roswell, reported on a number of people who claimed to have heard the little bodies, little coffin story from Dennis.

Former Roswell police chief L. M. Hall in his 1993 affidavit for the Fund for UFO Search said that he remembered Dennis telling him only a few days after the newspaper stories that he had received telephone calls asking about the small coffins. Hall claimed that Dennis said they wanted "to bury [or ship] those aliens." Hall said that he thought it was some kind of a joke. But this isn’t documentation. It is hearsay.

Besides, there really is nothing in Hall’s statement to anchor this recollection in time. Yes, he says that it was just days after the events in the newspaper, but this might be where he is confused. I can’t think of a reason this should stick in his memory, nor can I think of a reason that it has to be 1947. Hall, here, I believe is, confused.

Carey and Schmitt found Roswell attorney Richard L. Bean who said that he heard the tale of the telephone calls within days of the crash, but it was a couple of years before he heard Dennis talking about it which doesn’t do us much real good either. The couple of years could be something more and again, this doesn’t anchor the event for us.

Most important, none of this information was reported before the explosion of the Roswell case. There is nothing to support the idea that Dennis had been telling this story since 1947 to selected friends.

There doesn’t seem to be any written documentation that transcends the publication of The Roswell Incident. Dennis’ story emerges in 1989 and has since undergone a number of evolutions. I have tracked the story from the beginning and haven’t seen any reason to alter my earlier opinion that there are some real problems with it, not the least of which is the changing name of the nurse.

Once again, I’m at odds with those in the UFO field. Most accept Dennis’ story as legitimate, but I can’t. There are too many red flags, too many discrepancies, and too many changes to it. I have learned, over the years, that a story that changes to incorporate new information is probably not accurate.

So, rather than not say anything about this and letting others fight it out here, I figured I would tell what I knew about Dennis and his missing nurse. Without some kind of verification that does not rely simply on the memories of people who believe that Dennis said something in 1947 to them, I find no reason to accept this tale as accurate.

46 comments:

Thank you for responding to my basic questions in the comment thread of your prior post about Dennis' veracity (or rather, the apparent lack of it) and whether you thought "the nurse" actually existed and saw the bodies that Dennis alleged she told him of at the hospital.

It now seems this scenario, based on your post here, as described by Dennis, did not occur.

Take the early statement by Dennis to the effect that: "She [the nurse] was sure that they were not from Earth and she told him not to tell anyone about the events".

Already Dennis' story sounds extremely dubious. He tells you in 1990, long after Roswell had become a famous UFO case, that this nurse knew in 1947 that the creatures were "not from earth". Really? And how did this junior nurse know this startling fact? Was she familiar with ETs and with what they looked like?

And why would she ever tell Dennis this vital secret anyway, when she knew the consequences if she revealed anything about it? The fact that they were in a 'relationship' is no excuse. Relationships can easily break up and change into bitterness.(In which case perhaps they would both have ended up as 'dog food').

There is no point going any further after this amazing statement by Dennis. The whole story falls at this point. Nobody in 1947 knew what ETs looked like, and nobody does now. Dennis has simply had an experience of an aircraft fatality or fatalities at some time and has added the nurse tale of the ETs as an extra piece of tittle-tattle to go in a documentary you were making. I presume the nurse's demise was also an invention, as was her name.

As you say, the confirmation from L.M.Hall is useless, since again Hall is, most probably, simply using a date (1947) supplied to him by interviewers and claiming Dennis spoke to him at that time, telling him the exact story that the nurse told him (Dennis) NOT to pass on to anyone!

Naturally there is no documentation whatever to back up Hall's story, or Dennis's. What I'd like to know is whether Hall wrote his affidavit before he had read your (and Schmitt's) first Roswell book, or afterwards. The affidavit date is Sept 1993. What do you think?

I'm not being facetious--at least, not entirely. As you point out, Self(f) is not the most common name. You also point out that we don't know why he picked this name. That it had some psychological meaning for him is at least worth considering.

When does Glenn Dennis first appear as an actor (source of information) in the Roswell story? Only in 1989? Or is there some trace of him earlier?

As the Devil's advocate. There are several ways to spell Self that sound the same. Self, Selff, even Celph, but assuming that Dennis wrote to her I would think he knew the right spelling. Off the top of my head I don't remember when the Air Force was created. But when my Uncle was in his records were transfered to the new Air Force from the AAF. Have the Air Force records been scanned? What unit operated the base hospital? Did it have other detachments at other bases, or was it a detachment it's self? The nurse may have been on TDY at the base. I just love a mystery.

Kevin, I would like to point out that the premise of at least part of the Glenn Dennis story is highly improbable. He says that he received phone calls inquiring about small caskets. The premise here would seem to be that the army air corps was planning on burying the small alien bodies someplace, or perhaps storing the bodies in the caskets. Doesn't that seem extremely unlikely? Why would they bury the bodies at all, much less in some commercial caskets? I think it much much more likely that such extraordinary specimens would be preserved in an appropriate way, consistent with the technology of the times. I very seriously doubt that this would involve commercial caskets of any type. This part of the story makes the other parts seem much less credible, even disregarding the problems with the nurse.

Amongst the many doubts about Dennis' account, the coffins stand out. It's only a detail, but the references to small coffins seem unrealistic. They suggest, to me, the creative, literary technique of foreshadowing.

Interesting point, K. Have you seen any book which makes that point about caskets? I don't know; it's possible that some bodies were so decomposed or scanvenged they were deemed useless for study. But as intelligent beings they still seemed worthy of "proper burial."

Nice thread and replies ! Very informative.Just a question to Kevin (or others) I'm very curious.

In your "meeting(s)" with Glenn Denis, did he have already "words" or did he evokated the project to open a second Museum in Roswell, did he have it in mind in 1989 or soon after?

I'm very interested by the "chronology" on how the project of this second Museum was born (if I'm correct, it opened in 1992 ?).

For example, the opening of this museum have coincidences with when, more or less, some Roswell's "protagonists" have changed their Testimonies with "embelishments" (aka Walter Haut) or are appearing in the "myth" (aka Glenn Dennis)...

Starman, no I can't say I've ever read anything that suggests this point. But I think that this kind of shaky premise or inconsistency can be seen in many UFO/ET witness stories, and not just about the Roswell incident. I think usually these background type questions get lost because of the much more extraordinary claims in the accounts; i.e. in this case the ET bodies.

I believe the question about the caskets and if they could be hermetically sealed could suggest they were interested in transport without fear of additional contamination. Yes, they had already been handled, and yes, they were exposed to the desert environment, but they would have been thinking of a long transport (to Ohio) and keeping further contamination to a minimum.

I never thought of the caskets for burial, but for avoiding more contamination.

If I have the chronology correct, I heard the Dennis story before there was talk of a museum. Walter Haut was the driving force of the museum. He, with Max Littell and Glenn Dennis got the museum going. Theirs followed that of John Price (who had it in his Video Store near what had been the front gate).

I just don't buy the need for caskets, hermetically sealed or otherwise. I would think that the military would have access to body bags, etc. Even if they did request caskets, why specify small caskets? If they are just for transport, does it make any difference if the bodies are much smaller than the caskets?

Another thing, would the military really be performing impromptu autopsies in side rooms on something as extraordinary as an alien specimen? What about the risk of contamination from some type of bacteria or virus? I think that any such autopsy would be performed under the strictest of controlled conditions, in some type of bio-hazard controlled environment. Consider the quarantine of the returning astronauts and moon rocks in the Apollo days. The scenario described by GD doesn't ring true.

My view is that he was genuinely involved in one, maybe more, air accidents during his time at the Ballard Home, and has embellished his tale with the caskets, ET bodies, and maybe the nurse as well. And he has got his dates confused. So perhaps, re Glenn Dennis anyway, McAndrew's "CASE CLOSED" story is near enough correct.

K, this was, after all, in '47, well before the space program, I presume, led to serious precautions against contamination from alien sources here, or from earth elsewhere. The whole affair was so sudden, and unexpected, and unique, it wouldn't be surprising if the participants did some unwise or careless things (the press release may be another example).

Agreed. Whatever actually occurred there in 1947, it has become modern American myth and I think it most likely will remain as such. There is an interesting book that discusses this: UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth.

BTW, last year, dear Paul Kimball made available a very rare interview of Benson Saler, one the co-author of this book, interview titled "Roswell and the making of a modern myth". I find it "excellent". It is in two parts :

You mention that perhaps Dennis "adopted" the story of receiving a call from the RAAFB requesting small coffins from maybe someone else who worked at the Ballard funeral home (of a more senior, qualified status than Dennis was at that time), and who Dennis may have either overheard or discussed the call with, about the request, after the fact.

How did that aspect, or implication (given what you know about Dennis), arise? How much credibility do you think it may have?

The reason I ask is, regardless of Dennis's version of events, do you think someone at RAAFB did call someone else at the funeral parlor to actually inquire about small coffins, or not?

In turn, if you think some call was made from RAAFB to Ballard asking about small coffins, even if it wasn't received by Dennis (who you imply may have misappropriated some other person's experience for his own, for whatever reasons), do you think the same kind of thing may have been done by Dennis in relaying the nurse's story?

I.E., can you name the person who you surmise might have taken the "small coffins" call, if known, and even if not, have you considered that Dennis may have also appropriated someone else's telling of the nurse's story as his own also, but when challenged as to her name and other details, was put into a position where he tried to fabricate misleading details to cover his initial lie or exaggeration about his being the one who heard the nurse's story directly?

I guess my final questions boil down to this--even if it wasn't Dennis who either got the call or met up with the nurse, do you think either story still may have some validity (independent of Dennis's retelling of them)?

Do you think either an actual call about "small coffins" was made, or that there was an actual nurse who saw bodies being autopsied at the hospital, but who actually told someone else (other than Dennis), and that, in turn, Dennis was then either told by this/these unknown person(s) about their contact with the nurse, and her seeing bodies, etc., and which Dennis may have "adopted," again (and subsequently retold as his own personal experience), or do you think either or both stories were made up by Dennis out of whole cloth, or complete fabrications?

Is there any veracity, in your opinion and based on your research, that the coffins story or the nurse seeing bodies at the hospital have any independent (of Dennis) reality, or not?

On what bases, if so? How did the idea of another person at Ballard getting the initial call from RAAFB come from? Do you think the same person also heard the nurse's story, or was this another person?

Sorry for the redundancy in this comment--I just wanted to put the questions that just occurred to me out there for your comment, since if someone else(s) were involved, who were they, and if identified, were they interviewed or were they deceased by the time Dennis's stories came into question?

1. Is there a transcript of Stan Friedman's initial interview with Dennis, and what does it reveal?

2. Did Stan, either before or after the interview, supply Dennis with a lot of his published pro-ET papers on UFOs (Roswell or otherwise)?

3. What Roswell books, articles, TV shows had Dennis seen before, or after, the Friedman interview?

But I do not realistically expect to get the answers.

At one time I read an interview of Dennis by one Anne McKie (or McFie?) in which, during the interview, she asked him how Friedman came to know of Dennis in the first place. Dennis' reply was "from some papers in Washington".

Oh really? Which papers were these? Do you have any idea, Kevin, or is this another cock and bull story?

First, the book you all cite about Roswell and the genesis of a myth is filled with half-truths and misinformation in an attempt to prove that what fell was a balloon array.

For example, Charle Moore forgets to acknowledge that he received the winds aloof data from me. I sent him what he requested, and he asked for additional charts, which I supplied. In his book he suggests he received the material from another source.

He also forgets that he, along with a couple of his colleagues traveled to Roswell to request their assistance in tracking his balloon arrays, which means the officers and soldiers at Roswell were aware of these arrays...

He also fails to acknowledge that theproject was required to file NOTAMS about the balloon releases, which is to say that each launch was announced in the NOTAMS which would have been posted in the base Operations Building so that pilots, in their flight planning, would be aware of this possible hazard to aerial navigation... which means they would be looking for the balloon arrays so that they didn't fly into them.

The myth here is that anyone would have been fooled by what is in essence a group of weather balloons and radar targets. You might disagree with the extraterrestrial theory but Mogul simply doesn't work.

Here is the chronology of these events surrounding Dennis, as best as I can reconstruct them. I will answer no questions about what Stan Friedman might have said, done, or sent because I have no inside knowledge of that. I will note, however, that it was Stan's method to send witnesses a large package of UFO material before he interviewed them which certainly could lead to contamination.

In 1978, Jesse Marcel talked of picking up pieces of a flying saucer. His story was one of many cited by Len Stringfield in his 1978 talk at the MUFON Symposium. Marcel was not mentioned in the published paper because the information from Marcel arrived after the due date of the paper. Stringfield did mention in the course of his presentation.

In 1980 The Roswell Incident was published without much of a splash. It provided some of the preliminaries of the story along with some information that was less than accurate.

In 1989 Unsolved Mysteries did a segment on the Roswell UFO crash. Now, I had learned Dennis' name prior to the broadcast and had set up a meeting with him about a month after the segment was filmed. Stan met with him about three weeks before my meeting and I said that I would not interview him as long as I received a transcript of the interview. I did receive a copy of most of it.

In 1990 we were working on a documentary in Roswell and Mark Wolf arranged to meet Dennis. Two or three days later Dennis agreed to an interview on video tape. Wolf conducted that interview.

The next day Dennis wanted to do another interview while dressed in a suit. Wolf agreed but I conducted that interview.

The big Roswell splash came after those interviews...

But here's the thing... Dennis lived in Roswell and while the rest of the country might not have taken much notice, in Roswell they did.

And here is one other thing. I got Dennis' name from Walter Haut who was in this thing almost from the beginning. He wrote the original press release and he was interviewed by everyone. In fact, his wife kept a guest book and had everyone who visited to talk about UFOs sign it.

All this means is that Dennis emerged prior to the explosion of Roswell information, but he didn't emerge into a vacuum.

Kevin, agreed, the cited book, UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth, is certainly not the last word on the events of 1947, but I think that the Roswell crash has become a modern American myth and the authors of the book describe the process by which that happened very well. I think it is stated in the forward or preface to the book that they are not attempting to make any statement regarding what exactly did take place there, but just the process by which it has become a modern myth. But I agree with you, after qualifying the whole thing as such, they then go on later in the book to engage in a campaign for the mogul balloon explanation, I think they just couldn't help themselves. My mind is open on the actual event. But I doubt we'll ever know.

IF, that was the case, that Dennis "Borrowed" the story, then the name of the nurse may not be a complete lie. He may have hear either a first or last name and guessed at the rest. Or just as likely tried to remember a name that he had heard at the hospital.

Sorry for the "double posting," above (at 1:47 and 1:49 am). I got an error message after posting the comment I've left up, and could only post the draft one, or so I thought until I saw both this evening. I've deleted the draft version (1:49 am).

I suppose commenters here should know that if you stay within the 4096 character limit (test by doing "preview" first to see), even if you compose a long comment and then preview it to make sure it's within 4096c., you may still get a generic "URL too large to process" type error when you then try to publish it, which doesn't even make sense as a descriptive error code term.

This is a persistent Google / Blogger error--one of several that the comment function is afflicted by, but Google doesn't care, or they would have corrected it and 4 other comment function errors/problems years ago--they have apparently better things to do with their ten's of billions of dollars than provide adequate customer support or fix very basic blog site and comment function screw-ups. Go figure.

Anyway, the point here is that if your comment is within 4096c., and you get the "URL too large to process" error, ignore it and don't attempt to repost, as the initial comment will get published in the thread, only it takes some minutes to do so, instead of appearing right away as usual. Otherwise, trying to repost results in a delayed double posting, as I belatedly found out. Sheesh!

Another lesson from Google, the monopoly that teaches us so much about themselves by lack of due diligence and decent support.

"Don't be evil," my ass! Oh, I almost forgot--they dropped that never true slogan years ago. 8^}

Ahem. Now that I've gotten that little rant out of the way, I'd like to note, Kevin, that I was not referencing the book, "UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth," in my series of questions about whether you thought Glenn Dennis might have misappropriated either or both of the stories he has told as having direct involvement in, or not.

To summarize, it was kind of a complicated three-part question series that, regardless of the specific answers, might still illuminate aspects of the Roswell incident and Dennis' actual role, if any, in it. To reiterate:

1.) Even if Dennis is either a confabulator or liar, since you suggested someone else at the Ballard funeral home might have actually received a call from RAAFB regarding the availability of small coffins and whether they could be hermetically sealed, what is the basis for that surmise? Do you have any real idea who, if not Dennis, might have received such a call? Do you know who made the call and request from RAAFB?

2.) If there is a basis to your surmise, and if Dennis, as you imply, may have "adopted" someone else's story about the call as his own in retelling it decades later, do you think he may have done the same thing in his retelling of the nurse's story? If so, would this have been the same unknown person from the Ballard funeral home, or someone different? Do you have, if you think this latter, 2nd person, is possible, any idea who this second unknown person might have been? Or, do you think Dennis might have been the one to speak to the nurse, in turn? Or, do you think the nurse, and her story, has any independent validity, regardless of Dennis' alleged role in it, or not?

3.) If Dennis used other persons' experiences as his own in his awkward and misleading retelling of these two stories when he was confronted with the fact that no record of a nurse named Naomi Self (or variations on that name) was ever at RAAFB during the time of the Roswell incident, and if you know who either of these unknown persons might be (if not the same person, OTOH), did anyone ever approach them or interview them? Can you tell us who they might be, even if deceased or not interviewed? Or is this hypothesis, about Dennis stealing other persons recounting to him of their actual experiences, [which would suggest more support for the Roswell incident, and that either or both incidents Dennis told about did occur, just not to him], itself either a confabulation or intentional lie by Dennis, for apparent self-aggrandizing reasons, and that neither aspect of "Dennis' stories" about the call or the nurse has been or can be confirmed in a substantive way, and that Dennis is simply dishonest for whatever reasons? Did anyone else ever come forward to endorse Dennis' version of events that you consider reliable?

I know this is parsing what may seem to be a few thin hairs, but your noting someone else at the Ballard funeral home, not Dennis, may have received a call from RAAFB about small coffins does suggest an alternate scenario which is intriguing, if it could be established that the incidents, either one, did occur but that Dennis "adopted" them as his own experiences at the time when he retold them to you and others. As things stand now, it is highly ambiguous and unresolved.

It would also be highly interesting if Dennis was confirmed to not be telling the truth, either about his experiences or others, and that there is no independent, verifiable, or firm basis to Dennis' stories other than his words. But you seem to have suggested otherwise, at least about the call to Ballard, and that's what I was curious about, question, and wonder what the basis of that implication might be.

Can you help us out here, and respond in more detail about these specific, contingent questions?

This seems to be an aspect of the overall Roswell incident that has not been made clear or explicated sufficiently to understand not just the chronology or sequence of events, but what actually happened and to whom. in reference to Dennis' stories.

Do you know at least some of the answers to these questions, or at least who else might have made or received the RAAFB "small coffins" call, etc.?

It would be odd that a funeral home had just one employee. And just as odd that the embalmer would answer the phone and take requests. That would have been either the owner, trying to cut costs and get business, or a receptionist, who was willing to work cheep enough. Because the link to the funeral home wasn't suggested until late in the gane I would think that all the staff are long dead by now.

For the Roswell case, and I stress, for the Roswell case, the military witnesses from Jess Marcel, Sr., to Edwin Easley. There are many good witnesses in that category... and there are still some good civilian witnesses such as Frankie Rowe and the Roswell fire fighter.

Christopher wrote:In light of many witnesses being discredited, new ones coming out, I would think a posting or new Roswell update book would certainly help clear the confusion!

IMHO, the number of Roswell that have truly been "discredited" has been grossly exaggerated by the skeptics. Also they never like to talk about the so-called skeptic "balloon" witnesses that have been partially or totally discredited, like CIC agent Sheridan Cavitt, Charles Moore, or Bessie Brazel. The razor cuts both ways.

My personal thoughts on Glenn Dennis and the mystery nurse is that he hid her true identity for reasons that might be beyond the Roswell incident, such as an affair.

For that reason, I don't feel his testimony can be rejected.

Please pardon my ignorance if that theory has already been addressed.

I totally agree and these points have been addressed elsewhere, such as "Witness to Roswell" by Carey & Schmitt. There is a LOT of testimony corroborating Dennis that is getting flippantly dismissed. And I do think Dennis had personal reasons to lie about the nurse's name and perhaps some of her history, mostly to protect her identity because she was still alive.

One very possible candidate for the nurse was Mary Crowley Lowe, who up until a few years ago was alive and living in Roswell. Dennis very much knew who she was. Other possibilities were nurse Adeline "Eileen" Fanton and/or hospital administrator secretary Miriam Bush, the latter in particular, according to family members, having seen the aliens at the base hospital. These people all had similar physical descriptions, and perhaps Dennis made his Nurse X a composite of all of them to disguise the identity.

I've summarized the various corroborating witnesses to Dennis' story over on my website:

www.roswellproof.com/dennis.html

Also relevant body testimony from friends and family of Oliver "Pappy" Henderson:

www.roswellproof.com/henderson.html

My last count had around four dozen witnesses to an alien body or some sort of body recovery at Roswell, about 90% second-hand, but also a few first-hand witnesses.

I disagree. There is not a LOT of testimony corroborating Dennis. There is some which in and of itself is slightly suspect.

While I hesitate to engage in another long dispute, I will note that Dennis, when he gave me the nurse's name was quite specific. He made me promise not to reveal it because of his promise to her. Then he told nearly everyone else under the sun, changing the name slightly.

While we were searching for the nurse, he asked me why we hadn't found because he had given me the name. Not exactly the kind of thing you would do if you had invented the name.

Then, when Vic Golubic said that no nurse by the name Dennis supplied existed, Dennis changed the story, saying that he told us up front that he would give us a name but it wouldn't be the right name. This was a lie. He said nothing of the sort to me, and as far as I know, said nothing of the sort to anyone else.

Then he said that the last name did begin with an "S", not exactly a big help. And there was discussion that the name was Sipes.

There is no one who can verify Dennis' story directly. We have those who suggested that Dennis said something to them in the days after the crash, but we have no way to actually anchor this information in time. It could have been a week... it could have been a couple of years... it could have been a couple of decades.

Given the nature of the story, given the shifting name of the nurse, given the lie about how that name was provided to researchers including Stan Friedman, Karl Pflock and even Phil Klass (I have no idea how Klass learned the name, but I was surprised that he had it), I just don't find this tale to be credible.

Isn't that the criticism by debunkers of just about every Roswell witness? E.g., who can verify directly Easley's story to you that they held Brazel at the base? Instead, what we have is corroborating testimony of others, like Bill Brazel, Marion Strickland, etc., that he was held at the base.

Who can verify directly what Marcel said they found on the debris field? The only other person with him was Cavitt, who we know lied about nearly everything. BUT we do have indirect corroboration from many others about highly anomalous debris, large debris field, etc.

We have those who suggested that Dennis said something to them in the days after the crash, but we have no way to actually anchor this information in time. It could have been a week... it could have been a couple of years... it could have been a couple of decades.

No, we have at least half a dozen people saying they heard the story of the child coffin call at the time, i.e., within a few days, or within no more than a few years. I think it is absurd to claim nobody can distinguish a few days or a few years from decades. This is just another debunker-type argument. Also you have argued that such testimony doesn't "document" what Dennis said. Again, this argument can be applied against just about every single piece of witness testimony, including witnesses you find completely credible.

The key point remains that Dennis was clearly telling the story about the base call for child-size coffins very early on, NOT decades later. Dennis DOES have corroboration for this part of his story, just like Marcel, Easley, etc.

It doesn't prove he took the phone call, but it does lend credence to it. Even if he was just an embalmer at the time instead of a certified mortician, in small town mortuaries embalmers frequently do many of the duties of the mortician, including such things as ordering caskets or taking phone calls. To say that Dennis could not have taken such a call is nothing but argument by assertion.

As for the story of the nurse, I see your points about the name changes, but there ARE other witnesses talking about alien bodies at the base hospital, unknown doctors at the hospital brought in from elsewhere, disappearing medical personnel, and even knowing about a nurse or nurses talking about the bodies.

Now, again, this doesn't prove Dennis knew such a nurse or that a nurse told him anything. He could have picked this up from others. But it does again add some credence to his story.

And then it turns out there was a Roswell nurse still alive in Roswell, Mary Crowley Lowe, who was located not through Dennis but through another witness (Mrs. Charles Huttanus) who said Lowe told her around 1960 of being a nurse at the base in 1947 when they brought the aliens in. And it was also pretty clear that Dennis knew Lowe and Lowe probably knew Dennis when both were approached and asked about it. In other words, this would be a very plausible reason why Dennis would lie about the nurse's name, if he had promised to never reveal her identity.

I understand your anger at Dennis lying to you about the nurse's name and obviously wasting your time on a wild goose chase. But I'm not willing to toss out the whole story and dismiss a LOT of corroborating testimony on what I consider flimsy rationales, such as people supposedly unable to distinguish days from decades. If you want to go down that route, you should forget about the entire Roswell case.

The difference between Dennis and Easley, or Dennis and Bill Brazel, or Dennis and Frankie Rowe is that none of those people lied to us about part of their story. Yes, Frankie Rowe has added to hers, but only as she began to trust us. And no, I can't prove to anyone what Easely said to me, but I know it to be fact.

I am, however, tired of dealing with those who wish to interject themselves into the story. Gerald Anderson was not on the Plains and did not see a crashed flying saucer, though I am now blamed for his host of lies. I made him lie to all those others...

I am tired of chasing down stories only to learn that the teller wasn't in Roswell in 1947... or in one extraordinary case, a 12-year-old saying that his father had come from Wright Field and taken him out to see the crash

Dennis told a lie about the nurse and gave us the wrong name. Okay. I could have lived without him giving us a name, but he did. When it was exposed, he then tried to blame me (and the others) for not listening to him. That was another lie.

And frankly, the story of the child-sized coffins really doesn't make sense either. The creatures, according to some, were five feet tall, hardly child sized. And why ask for the coffins in the first place... why not communicate with the Army Mortuary Service in at Lowry in Denver. That makes more sense than calling some local.

The point is that I do not find enough in the Dennis tale to find it plausible and I see no need to include it in the proof of the Roswell crash. We have enough good, solid witnesses that we should cut loose those who have been less than candid with us.

I fear, however, that we'll just have to agree to disagree on the matter of Dennis. I don't believe his tale is worth much and would rather rely on those whose stories make sense and who are credible...

And I would agree that Sheridan Cavitt is not one of those. Again, too many lies and contradictions for his tale to be credible.

If RAAF orders a number of child-size caskets from a private mortuary the natural reaction will be that some children recently died in an accident nearby, probably at the base. In which case you would expect there to be some mention of an accident in the newspapers (civilian or possibly military) involving children. Was there such a mention?

And if it was a genuine case of ETs and was under the strictest secrecy, you would not expect RAAF to even consider ordering coffins from a private funeral home, thereby putting security at risk. It would have been kept strictly internal to the AF, along with the debris & bodies.

"And if it was a genuine case of ETs and was under the strictest secrecy, you would not expect RAAF to even consider ordering coffins from a private funeral home, thereby putting security at risk. It would have been kept strictly internal to the AF, along with the debris & bodies".

Not to say that Dennis story is 100% credible. But your argument is not a very strong one.

If they (military men) had not got a funeral home of their own, or had not small coffins, they were probably forced to call to a private funeral home. In this world, death occurs frequently, so the funeral services are a standard thing, and asking for some coffins, is not a secret-revealing action.

Of course, watched from present day, in retrospective, asking for coffins for children is very suspicious, but probably at the moment they simply did not foresee the suspicious nature of such action.

In any case, may be they simply made a mistake. They shouldn't have called Dennis, but they did. ¿Are military men so perfect to be free of errors?

Thanks for quoting me completely out of context Paul. No doubt an old lawyer trick.

What I really said is that Kevin was using standard debunkery arguments to totally dismiss what Glenn Dennis said, such as time compression arguments for corroborating witnesses or that corroborating testimony itself was worthless. If he wanted to take that tack for Glennis, he could be hoisted on his own petards when it came to witnesses he did believe, such as Marcel or Easley. In which case he would have absolutely nothing when it came to Roswell, or just about any UFO case for that matter, old or modern.

Take Shag Harbour, e.g. What have you got? About a dozen witnesses corroborating each other that something in the sky seemed to go down, seeming headed for the harbour. Nobody actually saw it hit the water. By the time any witness or the RCMP got to the water, all they saw was a light bobbing on the water. There was a thick yellow foam on the water when rescue boats went out to search. There are government documents that something was reported crashing and they were searching the waters, but allegedly nothing was found. And according to other largely unnamed witnesses and no documents, something was allegedly searched for 25 miles to the north near a secret submarine detection grid.

So what we have is a dozen or so witnesses of something maybe going down, an unidentified light bobbing on the water, no physical evidence, and some documents that there was nothing found.

Debunking is easy. Witnesses are unreliable or liars or being "contaminated" by unscrupulous researchers, corroborating testimony is worthless, documents don't prove anything in that they were just reporting what the unreliable witnesses said happened, and there is no physical evidence.

So, Paul, you may as well forget about Shag Harbour as well. The Nova Scotia Roswell is a myth.

Why is it that when you disagree with an opinion, you label the holder of that opinion a Debunker?

I don't remember suggesting time compression but instead suggested that the Hall testimony is not anchored in time. There is no documentation to support his affidavit that Dennis told him about the bodies and the nurse in the days that followed the Roswell crash.

I will point out the difference here. Marcel was seen on the front pages of newspapers on July 9 and 10, 1947 which does anchor his tale to the proper time frame.

I will point out that Edwin Easley was the provost marshal in July 1947 as documented by the Yearbook Walter Haut produced.

Hall has nothing to document his belief that Dennis told him this in the days to follow... in fact, in view of the alleged threats, would Dennis be talking about this in the days that followed?

I will remind you that Dennis provided the name, Naomi Self, to me with no caveats. He gave the name Naomi Maria Selff to Karl Pflock with no caveats. When no one could find a trace of a nurse by those names, he changed the story saying it wasn't the real name. Then to cover himself, he blamed us for running off searching for a nurse by the name he had given us when he had warned us that he was making up the name.

No such warning was given to us. This is another lie told to protect the core story...

Neither Don Berliner nor I could find any hints that five Army nurses had been killed in a plane crash as he alleged... and yes, I freely admit that he might have believed this, having allegedly been told this by other nurses at the base.

And why was Self... or whoever the hell she was, writing to a married man? This implies a personal relationship... and yes, I know he could have been leading her on, but this is just another of the fuzzy areas of his tale.

So, no, I don't believe Dennis because he lied about his story more than once. And no, I see no anchor for the Hall story in any documentation, though Hall clearly said it was in the days following the crash.

And no, I don't see the attorney's story as anchored in time... in fact he said it was a couple of years later.

If you wish to believe Glenn Dennis, that is your privilege, but please don't label me a debunker because I require something more than a much told tale that has no documentation to support it.

Those old lawyers tricks come in handy when dealing with someone like you, who consistently employs the old Nixonian trick of attacking the messenger when you don't like the message. It's hard to drum up any respect for a man who would label Kevin Randle a debunker simply because he can see that Glenn Dennis is, to be kind, an unreliable witness.

There are plenty of reliable witnesses to actual UFO sightings out there. Kelly Johnson, Roy Wimmer and Rudy Thoren (among others), from the 1953 Santa Barbara Channel case, are good examples.

But instead of doing something productive, like talking about real UFO sightings, with good witnesses, you continue to flog the Roswell horse, and even worse, "witnesses" like Dennis, even as you wonder why fewer and fewer people are paying attention.

Like Nixon, I don't expect you to ever admit that you're wrong, or change your M.O., so I, like most serious people, will simply continue to ignore you.

Been believer of Roswell since I read Freidman's book,long ago. One Question in my mind was Glenn Dennis talking about being an assistant at the mortuary or funeral home. Never heard about whomever was actually in charge,as in his superior. And some of the inconsistencies over the years made me wonder if he was really telling someone else's story. As in told to him and he passed it on. I still have no doubt that the Roswell crash really happened,just not exactly the way Dennis says.